Category Archives: New Zealand

Southern Yarn for March-April, 2026

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The March-April issue of The Yarn is ready for your online perusal, and the monochromatic analog version is entrusted to our ever faithful Canada Post, for those less likely to be reading these words on the web… and as usual, we start off with the wise words from our editor…  

With all the bad news that bombards us these days, it’s a welcome break to spend time searching for and reading “other” news. And not just news – history, humour, member happenings and events also.

In this issue, there is some history concerning early emigration to New Zealand and Australia; there is some Tundra humour, some Footrot Flats humour courtesy of Murray Ball; there are snippets of all sorts of other interesting information and much more.

Thank you to Jenny, Judy, Peter, Brian and our advertisers for their contributions. Thank you, too, to Cherie at Echo Publishing in Sydney. After some back and forth with emails, we were granted permission to reproduce selected excerpts from Favourite Cricket Yarns by Ken Piesse (2016). You’ll find one of them somewhere further on in this issue.

Enjoy, Charlie

Southern Yarn for January – February, 2026

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The new issue of the Southern Yarn  is  now available for you to enjoy. To get you started, here is the editorial:

Due to Downunder House being closed over the Christmas and New Year period so that our hard-working staff could take a well-earned break and spend some quality time with family and friends, this issue of the Yarn is a slightly smaller version.

At least to start with, 2026 will see us still operating with a hybrid work arrangement to accommodate the different needs and preferences of our journalists. Some prefer to work from home while others find the office more suitable. So, most days it’s a compromise – home/office. Nevertheless, be assured, you, our valued readers, will always come first.

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Southern Yarn Nov-Dec 2025

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The Southern Yarn is once again ready for your enjoyment. It will be in the collection on our Yarns page, as well as via the image here. Thanks for sticking with us through our 75th anniversary in 2025 and we look forward to the year ahead with you.

Here’s Charlie’s editorial to get you started…

Many of you know, of course, that our Down Under Club meets for several of our events in the Scandinavian Cultural Centre. This has been a happy and convenient arrangement for many years now. For those who haven’t been there, we meet upstairs in a central open area adjoining the kitchen. Around that area are five other rooms dedicated for each of the SCC member countries – Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland. Those rooms are mini-museums and serve to help keep their cultures alive and educate and entertain the public, especially during Folklorama.

This year marks 150 years of settlement by the Icelanders in Manitoba. The Winnipeg Free Press has recently run a few nods to this major milestone. A good one to read is “Icelanders’ Manitoba saga marks Year 150”, by Conrad Sweatman (WFP 16Oct2025).

Meanwhile, as we’ve been highlighting throughout the year in the Yarn, our little Club has been celebrating 75 years! We will reflect on this achievement at our upcoming AGM – hopefully there will be a good turnout to help inform our start for the next 75.

In this issue there is the usual mix of Club news, travel, remembrance, trivia and birding. Thank you to my editorial assistants Jenny and Brian and our other contributors and advertisers. And, in case you have wondered – yes, we do make extensive use of AI to produce the Yarn — Actual Intelligence. 😊

Southern Yarn July/August 2025

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The Yarn is once again ready for your reading pleasure.

If I had a bucket list, it would now be one item shorter: I got to witness the “Toast to the Haggis”! This rare excitement came about while volunteering (mostly flipping pancakes) at the 57th Manitoba Highland Gathering last month in East Selkirk.

Selkirk is an apt choice for hosting this event as it was named for Lord Selkirk, who sponsored the Scottish settlers to the area in the early 1800s. [read more: www.lordselkirk.ca/the-settlers]. Congratulations to Margaret Walker and her team for pulling all the bits together that make the Gathering such a culturally significant event. It was fun and also an opportunity for Judy and me to make good use of our little Boler camper for its first outing this year.

In fact, the Selkirk campground was the perfect spot. One of the birding trails brought me within good range of a couple of good specimens – a great blue heron and a bald eagle (see p. 8).

Thanks again to those who contributed other articles of significance in this issue – Sam Dawson for the Club gathering at OEB (p. 1), Jenny Gates for our proud moment in the Legislature (p. 3), Michael Workman for the AFL report (p. 7), and everyone for our Club’s memories and reflections (p. 6).

Our advertisers are always appreciated and we hope you take advantage of their services whenever possible.

Yarn March-April 2025, plus Trivia

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The March-April issue of The Southern Yarn is ready for you in glorious full colour. Come check it out by clicking on the image of the front page, or perhaps you are one of our postal  subscribers, in which case you will be eagerly awaiting the swift delivery of the B&W version on distinctive yellow paper, by our venerable postal network.

As promised on page 5 of the newsletter, the answers (and JUST the answers)  to the trivia questions are below. Don’t look until you’ve tried to answer from the questions first.

Australia Trivia Answers

  1. Wombat
  2. Steven “Bradbury”
  3. “Harold Holt” Memorial Swimming Centre
  4. 1932
  5. Daintree Forest
  6. Hugh Jackman
  7. Macquarie Island
  8. Parkes, NSW
  9. 1974
  10. Neville Bonner
  11. Daryl Braithwaite
  12. Sydney Opera House
  13. Women first gained the right to vote in the Colony of South Australia in 1894
  14. Opal
  15. Platypus

New Zealand Trivia Answers 

  1. Green
  2. Edinburgh
  3. For Valour
  4. Xena
  5. Black Ferns (are one of the top women’s rugby teams in the world).
  6. Moas
  7. Peter Jackson (for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King)
  8. Rutherfordium
  9. Sir Russell Coutts
  10. Australian and Pacific
  11. 53
  12. Baldwin Street in Dunedin is the world’s steepest residential street a gradient of 1:2.86 at the steepest point.
  13. Lemon & Paeroa
  14. Adventure
  15. Blow on it